


(Five things that never happened to) Zeke

by Hope



Category: Halloween H20, The Faculty
Genre: Crossover, Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-02
Updated: 2005-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/27560.html<br/>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/27902.html<br/>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/28037.html</p></blockquote>





	(Five things that never happened to) Zeke

1.

Strode. Tate. Tyler. One name is as good as another, and at least he gets to choose his this time. The payout gives him enough to buy the house in Herrington (guardian-approved, of course) and enough to settle his mom in an up market institution for the foreseeable future. Zeke. Somewhat far from the cowardly simplicity of 'John'. His mom would probably flip at the more blatant religious connotations of it if she weren't so flipped already - _Ezekiel_, _whom god makes strong_; exiled for years before he's rewarded with the gift of vision. If pressed, he'd say he'd lost count of how many times he's repeated or restarted his senior year, now; though his eyes skip over the closet full of prep school blazers every morning, a burgundy and a blue and a dark purple, ties draped loose around the hangers like nooses. Not that many, really. Only a lifetime's worth. The only way a Herrington jacket's going to be added to that is if he joins the goddamn football team, and that's not something he can see himself prophesying, ever.

He sleeps in the garage, on a cot bed amidst the blank, dull black of the plastic draped over most everything, but leaves the lights on in the house all the time. The garage locks are more secure, and he knows it better than the thin-doored closets in the house and deceptive hallways, the easy slope of the porch roof from the second-storey windows.

He never samples his own stash, so he knows it's only a dream when he wakes one night, early morning, street lights gleaming sickly orange on the black plastic rising around him, breathing hard and heart pounding like his subconscious has either just drowned or fucked. The thin mattress beneath him feels like it's on fire, and his hand is sweaty, sticky against the sheet as he gropes down toward his thigh, old scar tingling to life again as he runs his finger across it, burning a little indignantly as he rips the sheet off to look at it, cold air hitting the sweaty skin. No different than usual; pale, waxy upraised tissue. The dream's still close when he shuts his eyes again, though; something oozing out of the old scar split open, white, wet and grainy like plaster used to record a death mask, not the healthy syrup-red it ought to be. Something, _things_ crawling, rushing about under the skin around the wound; trying to escape or dig deeper, he couldn't tell. Zeke wills himself to stop thinking about it, wills himself to sleep.

2.

Casey takes it better than he does, or maybe Casey's just more used to dealing with trauma, face hard and still and closed. No apologies this time, pitiful or wiseass, but then again, there's no sound at all except Zeke's harsh breathing, like the effort of forcing oxygen into his lungs is tearing something deep in his chest, something peeling back loose and flapping with each gust of it, some fibre tender and brutalized, and, oh

He has to stop walking then, or stop the half-stumble spin he'd somehow fallen into on the dull gleam of the wet asphalt, the only upright thing flashing in and out of his shaky vision a still and taut Casey. Zeke braces his hands on his knees and leans over, gasping. He thinks maybe he's going to vomit, probably a side-effect of the blow to the head he's sustained, concussion, or something worse, something's thoroughly fucked-up in his head and now he's _seeing things_, or probably, huh, yeah, he's still unconscious, and this is all some fantasy of his stunned brain and he's lying somewhere in the locker rooms, amidst a scattering of stale, sweaty gym clothes and football helmets.

When he opens his eyes the world rights itself again, though, no matter how hard he tries to blink the heavy blood collected in his eyebrows into his eyes so he can blame that, or hide the evidence around them. The traffic light above the intersection outside the school swings a little in the wind, desolate and silent, it flicks from green to amber to red, and bathes the still figures below it in bloodied light; still cars and figures stopped or dropped mid-motion.

Somewhere within the thick carpet of houses beyond the football field a smoke alarm peals, within a few moments Zeke can see flickers of orange flame licking up, dense white smoke rising above the dark tree silhouettes. He doesn't start when something grips tight around his bicep, his body already loose and reflex-less, he turns, and Casey's white face is staring up at him, still as expressionless as those lying around them. "Come on," Casey says, voice stiff. "Lets get the fuck out of here." Zeke tilts his head back as they walk, trying to steady his breathing by focusing on the minute pinpricks of light glimmering amidst the lowering cloud as Casey leads them on, picking a path through the bodies.

3.

the third time zeke catches little casey connor taking his picture he doesn't pretend to ignore it, instead abruptly alters his course and heads towards casey, maintaining a steady, easy stride as he approaches. casey freezes like a deer in the headlights, fingers white-knuckled around the body of the camera, held up in front of him, eyes huge, and his head's wrenched forward by the strap when zeke tears the camera from his hands. it splits on the second blow against the chipped concrete wall, black plastic cracking open and lenses popping out like a trick can of snakes, tinkling as they shatter on the pavement. casey still doesn't move, no wisecrack this time, no resistance as zeke turns again without a word and heads back to his car.

when zeke thinks back he can't remember seeing casey at school the day after that, but then he can't remember when he cared if casey was at school or not. it certainly made no difference to business. the day after that, though, zeke notices casey as he's being marched down the deserted school corridor, refusing to keep his head down and looking in through open class doors on the way instead, and there's casey, sitting in the middle row of burke's cheesy english class fourth period, glancing up to raise an eyebrow at him as the rest of the class gape shamelessly.

rage is so passé, and he learnt the futility and humiliation of tantrums well before he hit puberty. that doesn't stop frustration rising in his gullet when his mom turns up to the hearing, though, blowing any chance he had at playing the maladjusted-and-abandoned-child card. she negotiates with his lawyer as he sits on, silent in some anonymous meeting room in the courthouse. she cuts his sentence down to eighteen months before her clawed fingers draw her cigarettes out of her purse, as if of their own volition, and she excuses herself shortly afterward, leaving zeke to brood in the close room as the shiny-suited lawyer babbles about _parole_ and _appeals_ and other crap.

prison can't be that bad. sure, he won't exactly have his car (which was, along with the stash in the trunk, of course, confiscated for evidence), but other than that he can't see how vastly different from school it'll be, especially as it's some lightweight _juvenile detention centre_ anyway. rage is passé but eighteen months is long enough to come up with a perfectly reasonable mode of revenge.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/27560.html  
> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/27902.html  
> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/28037.html


End file.
